A Review of Cancer Genetics and Genomics Studies in Africa
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Date
2021-02-15
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Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Front. Oncol.
Abstract
Cancer is the second leading cause of death globally and is projected to overtake
infectious disease as the leading cause of mortality in Africa within the next two decades.
Cancer is a group of genomic diseases that presents with intra- and inter-population
unique phenotypes, with Black populations having the burden of morbidity and mortality
for most types. At large, the prevention and treatment of cancers have been propelled by
the understanding of the genetic make-up of the disease of mostly non-African
populations. By the same token, there is a wide knowledge gap in understanding the
underlying genetic causes of, and genomic alterations associated with, cancer among
black Africans. Accordingly, we performed a review of the literature to survey existing
studies on cancer genetics/genomics and curated findings pertaining to publications
across multiple cancer types conducted on African populations. We used PubMed MeSH
terms to retrieve the relevant publications from 1990 to December 2019. The metadata of
these publications were extracted using R text mining packages: RISmed and
Pubmed.mineR. The data showed that only 0.329% of cancer publications globally
were on Africa, and only 0.016% were on cancer genetics/genomics from Africa.
Although the most prevalent cancers in Africa are cancers of the breast, cervix, uterus,
and prostate, publications representing breast, colorectal, liver, and blood cancers were
the most frequent in our review. The most frequently reported cancer genes were BRCA1,
BRCA2, and TP53. Next, the genes reported in the reviewed publications’ abstracts were
extracted and annotated into three gene ontology classes. Genes in the cellular
component class were mostly associated with cell part and organelle part, while those
in biological process and molecular function classes were mainly associated with cell
process, biological regulation, and binding, and catalytic activity, respectively. Overall, this
review highlights the paucity of research on cancer genomics on African populations,
identified gaps, and discussed the need for concerted efforts to encourage more research
on cancer genomics in Africa
Description
Keywords
cancer, genetics, genomics, Africa, molecular biology, Nigeria, Digital Development, Covenant University, CAPiC, ACE: Applied Informatics and Communication